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I want to public ally acknowledge your work on this product and apologize for my skepticism early on. It was my contention that very few folks would be interested in or understand your work. I was wrong. In 36 days you have garnered 510 posts on this ambitious thread and project. Of those I counted nearly 50 individuals who contributed.

Clearly, folks that lurk the digital part of the Forum are not the norm of the typical digital piano shopper. I still contend that the bulk of buyers are little inclined to be interested or to absorb your date and conclusions. However, you have proven up a material number of folks in a concentrated period of time who do. Keep up the good work.

Maybe the next step is to query techs from the manufacturers and present your findings asking them to comment re. the context of their product specification postings. Perhaps there may be something in their methodology that you might be missing. Perhaps they may have gotten ahead of their corporate selves in their claims. My guess is the reality lies somewhere in between.

From my perspective as a salesman representing the product, the company reporting 3X sampling or 4X sampling is not going to cost me a nickel. What might cost us all a bunch is for manufacturerâs presentations of specifications to be proven false and misleading on a large scale. From a practical perspective I would opt for the truth, even if their âtechnologyâ takes a quantum leap backward.

Marty

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Co-Author of The Complete Idiot's Guide To Buying A Piano. A "must read" before you shop. Work for west coast dealer for Yamaha, Schimmel, Bosendorfer, Wm. Knabe.

Goofball Jones was kind enough to post an DPBSD MP3 of the Natural Grand S6 patch from a brand new Yamaha S90 XS - thanks Goofball!

The attack sample length isn't too bad, though the low notes in particular could benefit from a bit longer loops. The velocity layering sounds pretty smooth, but not quite as smooth as other DPs these days are doing. Up to the first and only audible velocity switch at vel=46, I couldn't hear much in the way of timbre change with increase in velocity, but after that the timbre did noticeably brighten with increased velocity.

During the partial pedal test I noticed the looping "echo" sound was more pronounced, perhaps due to an enhancement of the high frequency content, or perhaps due to whatever process they are using to make the partially damped note decay faster.

The noise floor is fairly white (sounds like a hiss) which always makes analysis much easier. Except for the WAV => MP3 conversion, this recording was done 100% with the instrument (MIDI => WAV) - a convention and convenience I hope soon becomes the norm.

I screen grabbed a bunch of pix of the analysis, and the MP3 is in the usual place should anyone want to see / hear the test results.

I've also performed some maintenance on the picture directory - subfolders were added for the various manufacturers, and all the pictures associated with particular instruments now have their own dedicated zip archives.

How are your web programming/design skills?Given the amount of data contained within this thread, I would strongly recommend setting up a dedicated website similar to (or perhaps even partnering with) PurgatoryCreek.

I want to public ally acknowledge your work on this product and apologize for my skepticism early on. It was my contention that very few folks would be interested in or understand your work. I was wrong. In 36 days you have garnered 510 posts on this ambitious thread and project. Of those I counted nearly 50 individuals who contributed.

Clearly, folks that lurk the digital part of the Forum are not the norm of the typical digital piano shopper. I still contend that the bulk of buyers are little inclined to be interested or to absorb your date and conclusions. However, you have proven up a material number of folks in a concentrated period of time who do. Keep up the good work.

Why thank you very much Marty. I think we just got off on the wrong foot. I want to apologize for my earlier sharp remarks to you, please forgive me.

Originally Posted By: Marty Flinn

Maybe the next step is to query techs from the manufacturers and present your findings asking them to comment re. the context of their product specification postings. Perhaps there may be something in their methodology that you might be missing. Perhaps they may have gotten ahead of their corporate selves in their claims. My guess is the reality lies somewhere in between.

The Yamaha claims cited elsewhere here could be just poor translation, or overzealous marketing, who knows, but it does seem heavily biased in their favor. Everyone tells me the manufacturers watch these threads, so maybe pointing it out as kawaian has done is sufficient.

But in general I think this stuff is considered too secret for manufacturers to discuss openly with outsiders. The ironic part is that, with only a few notable exceptions, everyone's been doing pretty much the same thing since the first Kurzweil K250 rolled off the assembly line - with minor improvements here and there of course.

...Given the amount of data contained within this thread, I would strongly recommend setting up a dedicated website similar to (or perhaps even partnering with) PurgatoryCreek.

Good suggestion. Someone here actually set up a wordpress site for me to test, and it was quite slick & functional. It was hard to turn that offer down, but I'm not sure I want to pay for website hosting and have them collect ad revenue off of my content. At least I think that's how it works. I wasn't quite ready at that point for a full-blown blog either (not sure I am now, actually). I've thought of the Purgatory Creek angle too, but haven't actually contacted them to see what's what.

Do you know where I can keep lots of ~10MB files for free and link directly to them without ads and such popping up? My ISP (Verizon) allocates a rather tiny storage space, which is fine for my personal web page, but is nowhere near enough for the DPBSD project files.

dewster, I'm afraid I don't of any ad-free hosting that allows direct linking to files. You could of course rely on one of the many file hosting sites such as MediaFire or even dropbox etc. but I expect you'd rather keep everything in a single, reliable location, right?

How about contacting Frank (owner of PianoWorld) or Alden (author of the DP supplement to Piano Buyer)? Actually, the latter would be ideal - yep, definitely shoot Alden a PM.

Do you know where I can keep lots of ~10MB files for free and link directly to them without ads and such popping up? My ISP (Verizon) allocates a rather tiny storage space, which is fine for my personal web page, but is nowhere near enough for the DPBSD project files.

http://www.box.net gives you 1GB of storage for free and it doesn't have all those annoying popups. I may be worth checking out. I'm sure there are others but I've linked a bunch of files from there and it's worked out quite well. It also allows you to stream them without downloading.

Yesterday setchman kindly provided us with a DPBSD MP3 of the very latest Galaxy piano, the "Vintage D" - a sampled 1920 Steinway D using Kontakt 4 for playback. Thanks setchman!

It is of course fully sampled, with no stretching or looping evident. The velocity layers appear and sound blended through the broad middle velocities, with semi-audible switching at the soft and loud ends, but the switching is by no means objectionable, and the timbre variation with velocity is nicely done.

A few nitpicky things with the damper pedal though. It fails the pedal down silent replay test in two different ways, the vel=1 note causes a distinct muting of the note, and the pedal up event following causes total muting even though the key is still being held down. And I don't hear any sympathetic resonance when a single note is played first and the pedal pressed a bit later. Not surprisingly, DPs that use delay effects for the sympathetic resonance usually get this right, but a sampled instrument would have to somehow crossfade over to the pedal down sample of the note (perhaps they are doing so and I just can't hear it?). Finally, the pedal up/down sounds are triggered around the 50% pedal point, which is rather non-realistic when partially pedaling and the pedal is only moving a bit.

As usual, the text review, the MP3, and some pictures of the analysis are located at the share point for your viewing / listening pleasure.

Just a quick question, has anything ever passed the "pedal down silent replay test"? It seems that every review I've read has that as the first con. So should it really be in the test at all since it seems nothing does it?

Honestly, I didn't read every review, so I don't know if one does it or not. Just seems a majority of them don't.

Dewster: Yes, you are spot on re: the crossfading. I have at least one instrument that employs crossfading for the sustain resonance. (Pianowave's "Kalamkarian Bechstein"). It appears that both the pedal-up and pedal-down samples are always played simultaneously (with the attendent hit on polyphony!), with the cross fading invoked by the sustain pedal.

Unfortunately, the EW Quantum Leap Pianos does NOT employ cross fading, and has the same problem as the Vintage D appears that it may have. (I'm taking your word for it - I realise you are not 100% sure though)

I'm curious to see how well Ivory II does sustain resonance - I'm feeling optimistic.

Oops - it's actually the K-Sounds "Signature" that seems to play the sustain samples at the same time and cross fade - the Pianowave Bechstein actually seems to invoke the sustain samples only when required, saving polyphony! Both are Kontakt based.

No it's definitely not a reverby effect, I can distinguish the difference. It's a very realistic pedal down effect. It sounds like additional overtones. I don't know if it's a real sample or some virtual piano calculation.

Arrgh. It now appears that both the Pianowave and the K-Sounds have both sets of samples playing all the time, with the crossfading. However, for some reason K-Sounds simply uses more voices, all the time. The reason for my confusion is that I always thought Kontakt counted a stereo pair as two voices, but it does not - it counts it as one voice. One thing's for sure - they both smoothly switch on the sustain resonance when the sustain pedal is pressed.

No it's definitely not a reverby effect, I can distinguish the difference. It's a very realistic pedal down effect. It sounds like additional overtones. I don't know if it's a real sample or some virtual piano calculation.

BTW even the CLP-340 has stereo sustain samples...

I could be wrong, but I believe a "stereo sustain sample" is just a recording of all the strings vibrating after being excited by an impulse, and not by the specific notes being playing. Couple that with a little reverb and it could likely sound somewhat realistic. Genuine note samples with the damper pedal down would double the sample memory requirements, and we all know how crazy that notion is among DP manufacturers.

No it's definitely not a reverby effect, I can distinguish the difference. It's a very realistic pedal down effect. It sounds like additional overtones. I don't know if it's a real sample or some virtual piano calculation.

BTW even the CLP-340 has stereo sustain samples...

I could be wrong, but I believe a "stereo sustain sample" is just a recording of all the strings vibrating after being excited by an impulse, and not by the specific notes being playing. Couple that with a little reverb and it could likely sound somewhat realistic. Genuine note samples with the damper pedal down would double the sample memory requirements, and we all know how crazy that notion is among DP manufacturers.

Well I could be wrong, but I guess I have a pretty well trained ear regarding those subtle real acoustic sound effects, as I play acoustic piano quite often. When I have the damper down each individual keypress produces unique resonances. When setting reverb to "off" this can be observed much better. There are also specific overtones ringing depending on which key you've pressed which sounds very realistic to my ears. This can't be accomplished by simply recording all the strings vibrating. Since KAWAI keeps this as a company secret (?) I cannot really tell you how they accomplish this, but it's done very well. There is also a nice smooth transition from non-damped to damped sound when you press the damper pedal after you stroke a key.

Speculation: This might also be quite polyphony intense, which is why they might have this polyphony issues from time to time and 192 notes polyphony is really needed to activate all effects and still have enough sounds available.

Dewster, may I suggest two tests for you to add. It is something like a "re-pedalling" but not exactly This is a feature on real pianos, digital pianos but not all of the software pianos:

Test 11. Press a key, preferably a bass note (because it has longer key-off)2. Release the key3. Immediately after the release press the damper pedal.

Result: Depending on the key, the note velocity and the duration between the key release and damper press, you will be able catch the sound and keep it sounding.

Reason: The lower the note, the longer it takes for the damper to mute the string when you release the key.

(Result with e.g. Steinberg The Grand - even if you are "Speedy Gonzales", there is no chance to catch the note. You must press the sustain BEFORE you release the key if you would like to do a sustain)

This is a very realistic real scenario. If you play on a real piano, it is very possible that you release a key and in a matter of a thousand of a second you press the damper pedal. Both happen virtually at the same time and the result would be the same as if you have pressed the damper pedal before you have released the key. However if serialized via MIDI, these events are sequenced and it depends on the algorithm to interpret them correctly.-----------Test 21. Press a key, preferably bass, and preferably loudly2. Press the damper pedal.3. Release the key.4. Do a multiple quick "pumping" up and down with the damper pedal.

Result: Each time the damper pedal is pumped up, it begins muting the vibrating string, but since the muting is not instant, on the pump down motion you are letting it sound again, etc.

Reason: same as in Test 1

(Result with e.g. Steinberg The Grand - on the first pedal-up the notes are dropped)

The second test is very common technique in the classical piano repertoire, to simulate a sostenuto pedal if it is not available - you press a bass note, hold it with the damper pedal, then move both your hands in the highs to do some arpeggios but in the meanwhile you pump-up-down from time to time in order not to let too much high notes to create a mess. The highs get muted by the damper almost instantly, so you can clean the high notes by that pumping motions and at the same time the bass note will not get muted if you are quick enough with the pedal and if you are not lifting it too high (half-pedalling is a must).

Most of the sampler libraries are not supporting that feature. In fact only Pianoteq (because it is modelled) and Ivory (because it is professionally implemented) support it. Digital pianos have no problems maybe because they are looped and it is very easy to restart looping.

I am sure you have faced the Test 1 many times, but you never knew this existed simply because digital pianos are implementing it correctly. I realized all those effects for the first time when I tried Steinberg The Grand recently and there were many times when sustain seemed to not be working and I thought it was a faulty sustain pedal... After analysis it appeared I was pressing the damper pedal slightly after I have released keys. I've experienced that with Steinberg The Grand and Native Instrument Akoustik Piano only but I suppose it is a bug on other non-looped sample libraries.

Yes, I think the issue with the non-looped software pianos is that they often have release samples. It's difficult to produce the half pedalling whilst at the same time retaining the real release samples. Without the release samples, they could do the half pedalling in the same manner as looped digital pianos do. (just apply an envelope to the full length sample in the same manner)Ideally, the software piano would provide an option to the user: half pedalling without release samples, or no half pedalling, but with release samples. In fact, I have a third party script that works with Sampletekk's "White Grand" that does provide half pedalling (or at least, the ability to "catch" the notes as described earlier), but forgoes the release samples.

Dewster, may I suggest two tests for you to add. It is something like a "re-pedalling" but not exactly This is a feature on real pianos, digital pianos but not all of the software pianos...

Interesting. I'll certainly take it under advisement. I would need to experiment on a few DPs to see if similar timing would work across all of the ones that support these effects, and to see how difficult it would be to reproduce and analyze.

For the second test, some DPs that support partial pedaling have the transition between damped and undamped centered more towards pedal down, and that might stymie a single test. Perhaps multiple pedal levels could be used in two or three tests in order to have a better chance of capturing it.

What do people think of the DPBSD MP3 files? Do you download and listen to them? Do they help you? MediaFire keeps track of how many times a particular file is downloaded, and there seems to be a certain amount of activity there.

What do people think of the DPBSD MP3 files? Do you download and listen to them? Do they help you? MediaFire keeps track of how many times a particular file is downloaded, and there seems to be a certain amount of activity there.

How about the analysis pictures? Do you find them useful?

I like the analysis pics and I also listened to a few of the MP3s of the pianos I'm interested in (such as the HP-307, V-piano)... Keep it up